4 Technologies changing the way we provide you services

4 Technologies changing the way we provide you services

Last updated on February 13, 2015

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a few days with some other managed service providers at a conference in Chicago. After talking with many of them, I realized that some of the technologies that we were discussing were complete game changers for how we (service providers) provide technology services to you (our customers). I've highlighted what I think are 4 very important technology changes that will impact you directly (and us) in terms of time, efficiency, redundancy, and cost savings; all things I think everyone can get behind.

Some of these terms have been thrown around for a few years now, but the software defined data center (SDDN), the software-defined networking (SDN), and software defined application delivery (SDAP) have now come to the door of the service provider and to you. I think no other article on the net can describe the concept better than one from NetworkComputing.com earlier this year. I will not try to explain the concept in one single sentence, but I think for those that have a general idea of what this is, you can understand it with this simple analogy. Virtualized applications like Citrix Xenserver or VMware did for server consolidation with SDDC (and SDN, etc) will do for the data center. What does this mean for you? Simple. You'll have lower costs for enterprise class solutions, with more redundancy, and flexibility than ever. I'm involved with our sales and sales engineer staff relatively frequently with customized solutions. These normally require 2 or more servers, and a number of different technologies to provide the customer's desired need. Some require virtualization and some don't know enough about the technology to require it. When we show someone what our Server Cluster technologies can do, most customers minds immediately go in overdrive and they begin to think of the advantages of moving to architecture like this. At the end of the day, if your site/application/services never go offline, and you have all the resources you need at any time and can scale infinitely, doesn't it make you sleep better at night? I know Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others have had the need to push virtualization development to the point it is today, but the SME space might never have known about this technology if it wasn't for VMware, Cisco, Brocade, Citrix and others, these technologies wouldn't be within reach.

While I know the term alone won't be seen in our product offering directly(Buy an SDDC!), know that our technology team exists today to test these new ways to provide better services, and you'll begin to see them even more soon.

2. Docker

I heard about this operating system through a customer not too long ago. Our team began to review it and has dabbled with it. If you're familiar with the virtualization concept, then this should totally throw everything you know upside-down. Check out the Docker.com video to get an understanding of the concept of this incredible technology. While we are not deploying this in production, we are testing it, and know customers who are actively looking at the evolution of this technology. It could be a game changer for customers who rely heavily on virtualization platforms with development of their own software. And as the use increases, more and more businesses will use it, which leads to wide spread adoption.

3. SSD and Caching technologies

With the wide spread use of SSD's in servers, workstations and network storage devices, the concerns about IOPS being the bottleneck of a system are long gone. Large amounts of storage in old SATA arrays are things of the past. Fast cache cards, SSD's and other disk caching technologies such as Nutanix are starting to drive storage devices to just be a commodity. Because of that, many different vendors will play a role in storage going forward. To give you a consumer example, just a few weeks ago, SanDisk released their largest SD card ever - 512GB. Just think of that for a second when you think about how big your HDD is in your laptop or workstation. And the mass storage technologies I've had the ability to witness first hand are staggering compared to that SD card.

4. Even more Software as a Service (SaaS)

With the 3 items above, it's going to make it much easier for us to provide a specific software as a service platform for you. Want to try the most recent version of xyz software? Bam! Done. Install it on a cloud server or virtual machine. Need to turn that test/demo environment into a production environment? Bam! Done. Cloud the virtual machine(vm)/cloud server and push it to a larger, production vm or even to a physical dedicated server. All of these options are going to become very common, and even more common. So long to long configuration processes, or testing. SaaS was projected by Gartner to reach $22.1B in 2015 as of 2012, and I fully expect this to happen. With the implementation and integration of ISV's into cloud platforms like VMware and Citrix, SaaS is literally as easy as a download and power on the vm. You can begin selling and supporting immediately.